AOL's Tim Armstrong used a word that should have Yahoo employees shaking in their boots

The deal, officially announced Monday morning, will see the end
of an era for Yahoo.

But in Verizon's
announcement of the deal, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong also uttered
a word that comes up in many merger announcement and that should
have Yahoo employees anxious: synergies.

"We have enormous respect for what Yahoo has accomplished: This
transaction is about unleashing Yahoo's full potential,
building upon our collective synergies, and
strengthening and accelerating that growth," Armstrong said.
"Combining Verizon, AOL, and Yahoo will create a new powerful
competitive rival in mobile media and an open, scaled alternative
offering for advertisers and publishers."

In corporate speak, "synergies" is often used as shorthand for
layoffs.

The math on many corporate mergers is that one plus one equals
three, or something approximating this (2 1/2 will often do,
though sometimes it ends up worse than this).

And so for example if Company A has a big human-resources
department and it buys Company B, which also has a big HR
department, a new, consolidated management structure will most
likely seek to get double the production out of half the
employees.

And while not all departments at a company are likely to have
redundancies that prove attractive for consolidation, words like
"cost savings" and "synergies" are code for there being
opportunities that investment bankers, advisers, or existing
managers have identified as potentially opening the door
to a leaner operation.

Of course, this deal isn't all about firing people to save money.
At its heart, this deal is about Verizon building out its
advertising network. The main thing, then, that Verizon gets with
Yahoo is the company's ad tech and its existing scale.

Yahoo (and AOL and Verizon) employees can also perhaps take
solace in the vagueness of Armstrong's reference to synergies.
Contrast "collective synergies" with comments from past mergers,
for example Sherwin-Williams and Valspar's announced merger,
which identified $280 million in initial synergies and
targeted $320 million in long-term annual synergies.